Practical Experience Of A Beekeeper - From Buying Bees To The First Honey. Arrangement Of An Apiary. Photo

Table of contents:

Practical Experience Of A Beekeeper - From Buying Bees To The First Honey. Arrangement Of An Apiary. Photo
Practical Experience Of A Beekeeper - From Buying Bees To The First Honey. Arrangement Of An Apiary. Photo

Video: Practical Experience Of A Beekeeper - From Buying Bees To The First Honey. Arrangement Of An Apiary. Photo

Video: Practical Experience Of A Beekeeper - From Buying Bees To The First Honey. Arrangement Of An Apiary. Photo
Video: Beekeeping for Beginners -- Hive Set Up 2024, March
Anonim

In my previous articles, I talked about the rights and duties of a beekeeper and bee housebuilding (read the material How I became a beekeeper), and also dwelt in detail on what to buy for the first apiary. And now, when the theory has been studied, and everything necessary for arranging the apiary has been acquired, it is time to start practicing beekeeping. How I bought my first bees and pumped my first honey, I will tell you in this article.

Practical experience of a beekeeper - from buying bees to first honey
Practical experience of a beekeeper - from buying bees to first honey

Content:

  • How I was looking for my first bees
  • Creation of facilities for bees on the site
  • Moving bees
  • The process has begun!
  • First honey

How I was looking for my first bees

In advance, in February, I started looking for someone to sell me bee colonies. There is a lot of offers on the Internet - of all breeds and lines, with passports and without passport. Prices are steadily revolving around 4000 rubles per package (three frames with bees and a queen, one fodder frame). Thoroughbreds, of course, are more expensive, yard ones are cheaper. I wanted locals. So that they knew the situation, understood the local botany, were adapted to the climate. And calm.

Our terrain is melliferous, ecologically clean, apiaries (usually offsite) are at every step, including at a neighbor across the road. But you can't take from him - the bees can fly back if they don't like it. All sources unanimously advise not to take risks and buy bees no closer than 5 km. I was reinsured and ordered 20 km from us. Who knows them, these bees? Maybe they like beekeeping megalopolises with summer trips to nature, and we like them in the village for permanent residence.

We agreed for the second decade of April - to come, choose, pick up. The Karnika breed is calm, hard-working, with fertile queens.

The sale of bees usually takes place at the end of April-May, depending on the region: the gardens bloom, the bees are actively working, the queen lays eggs. That is, this is exactly the time when you can appreciate the strength of families and prospects. It is clear that a beginner like me is unlikely to be able to see anything significant. But here we have to hope for the decency of the seller.

The bee hive is waiting for the bees
The bee hive is waiting for the bees

Creation of facilities for bees on the site

Finally, they brought us hives. Now my husband's work has begun: screwing the handles, gate valves, painting the hives outside. He loves painting, as a process, and approaches it thoroughly. Apparently, there is some kind of unrealized artistic streak in him.

As a result, one hive turned out to be delicate shades of chicken, the other - the color of spring grass. Painted with acrylics, they are almost odorless. Coloring only on the outside, inside there is an amazing and healthy resinous smell.

The most crucial moment is the choice of a place for the hives. It is necessary for the bees to be comfortable - warm, minimum wind, morning sun, it is convenient to fly out and you can see everything from the entrance without a periscope. At the same time, in order to ensure elementary safety for home and visiting people, that is, our movements should not fall into the flight zone of bees.

We found such a place near the fence, under an adult drain. They decided to put the hives side by side for ease of maintenance. And the bees will not mix up their houses and will not drag honey into someone else's family.

To prevent the beehives from overgrowing with grass, black dense covering material was laid on the ground under them, and stones were placed on top. Since it is possible to mow with a trimmer around the hives, but to climb under them to pull the grass is a form of masochism, to which I have no inclination.

Holes were made in the covering material and sticks sharpened from below were driven in so that the slope of the hive was slightly forward - so that water from slanting rain would not flow, and it would be easier for the bees to clean up this way. With a slope to the right or left, the honeycomb within the bee is rebuilt unevenly. This is not good for both bees and beekeepers.

Before buying bees in the hives, I put mint and lemon balm. Not in order for the bees to breathe well there, but in order to prevent the settlement of comfortable houses by all sorts of homeless insects.

Everything is blooming, but there are no bees
Everything is blooming, but there are no bees

Moving bees

April began, plums and cherries bloomed. There are no bees. A peach has bloomed, foreign bees are collecting nectar and pollen on it! Will they get used to it, and how can they be driven out? By mid-April, cherries, plums, sweet cherries faded, pollinated by foreign bees (as the harvest later showed - poor quality). A peach has bloomed - there are no bees yet! The hives are lonely surrounded by flowering trees.

Finally, the contract date has arrived. After loading the boxes into the car, I went to the apiary. There is beauty! Colored beehives stand in even rows, there is a hum! The bees work tirelessly with their wings. Without bosses, logistics and management. Our walk with the owner between the rows does not bother them at all. Moreover, if the owner was in a suit and a net, then I was in jeans, a jacket and a net. Both without gloves. With a smoker, of course, but rather for the sake of order - to smoke a little into the open hive.

We examined several families, chose the ones they liked (the owner chose, I am, to put it mildly, rather weak in this matter). We put 4 frames with bees and a queen in my boxes, packed them. The holes were closed, the lids were nailed with carnations. The bees endured this procedure quite calmly, as if they were moving every day.

At home I put the boxes in the shade for 3 hours - let them leave a little after shaking the road. Then I moved the boxes to the hives and opened the holes on the boxes - so that they could fly around, look around, orient themselves. And by the evening, having put on a beekeeping suit, I rearranged the frames with the bees in the hives so that they could spend the night in a new home.

I added two frames of sushi each (empty rebuilt honeycombs - they gave me a gift in the apiary), so that there was a place for sowing with a queen, and along the frame of foundation, so that they would pull it off (make full-fledged honeycombs) with a hint of honey.

She covered everything with canvas and pillows, since about + 37 ° C is needed for brood growth. Letki (both upper and lower) opened. Then let them figure out where the front door will be, and where the black one will be, to take out the garbage.

The work in the hives is in full swing
The work in the hives is in full swing

The process has begun

Well, then work days began, the bees quickly found their bearings, where to take what and where to carry.

Already from the next morning, they began to work, collecting pollen and nectar. In front of the house, by the river, a willow was blooming, in the garden - apple trees, along the river and on a hill behind the house - the Tatar maple, in general, there is where to turn around. Apart from any dandelions.

The bees returned to the hives loaded to the eyeballs and with a multi-colored pollen (pollen on their hind legs). Every week I added 2 frames of foundation to them until the 16-frame hives were filled. It would have been better to add dryness, but I had nowhere to take it, so the bees also had to rebuild the honeycombs in parallel with the growing of the young generation, harvesting honey and bee bread.

When it got hot outside, the bees gnawed at the lovingly sewn pillows, hinting to the inexperienced beekeeper that it was time to remove them. She removed the pillows and partitions, leaving only a canvas.

During active honey harvesting, it is very easy to work with bees - they are so busy that the manipulations of the beekeeper hardly distract them. I worked with open hives without gloves, the smoker stood nearby and smoked somewhere to the side for order. The bees were busy with their own affairs, I - with mine. Such is the labor idyll.

Two-frame honey extractor
Two-frame honey extractor
We cut off the casing with a special fork
We cut off the casing with a special fork
Our first honey
Our first honey

First honey

2 months after the purchase of bees, we, being reassured by their active work, bought for 7 thousand rubles. honey extractor for 2 frames and in June the first honey was pumped out.

Since we need honey exclusively for our own consumption, for a start I took two frames from each hive, in which there was only honey (1/3 sealed) and there was no brood.

Pumping honey has its own rules. In the hive, the temperature for growing brood is maintained at about 26-36 degrees, the honey in the combs is relatively liquid and it is advisable to pump it out immediately after removing the frames, so it comes out better.

The process itself looks like this: we cut off the comb (caps on the honeycomb) from both sides of the frame and place two frames in the honey extractor.

We twist the handle of the honey extractor, and centrifugal force smears our honey along the walls of the unit. You need to twist it quickly, but without zeal, otherwise the honeycomb will break and the bees will have extra repair work. When there is almost no honey on one side of the frame, turn the frames over and repeat the procedure for the other side. Then the honey will flow down, open the tap and strain the honey through a strainer into the jar.

In the frames around the edges, a little honey still remains, there is no need to be greedy and squeeze out the last drops, it is better to put the frames back in the hive, the bees will clean everything, and drag the honey to other frames.

This is the kind of honey they brought us in early summer. In the photo, it turned out to be darkish, in fact, the color is dark amber. Local beekeepers say - from black maple (Tatar maple, there is a lot of it down the river) and mountain grasses. Delicious, aromatic. Own.

Recommended: